More immigrants needed "to pay for welfare"

More immigrants should be allowed into Sweden in order to safeguard the welfare system. That’s the view of Pär Nuder, Sweden’s finance minister. Speaking at a conference on demography at Statistics Sweden, Nuder argued that getting more people with a foreign background into the labour force is “totally crucial” for securing the Swedish welfare state. Nuder stated that he was open to the idea of sanctioning new immigration and that such a measure may enhance existing integration policies. “Importing labour can break new ground and serve as a model for others. At the minimum it can get employers and others to realise the value of the immigrants that are already here”. Nuder explained that the key to preserving the welfare state involves increasing the total number of hours worked by the Swedish labour force. This can be achieved by getting young people into jobs earlier than today and encouraging older workers to remain in employment for longer. However, Nuder submitted that the greatest potential of all lies in people with a foreign background who are already living here. He pointed out that currently some 60% of people who have moved to Sweden are in employment. If this figure could be raised to 80% which is the level for native Swedes, this would result in 115,000 new jobs and a gain of 17-18 billion SEK annually for the public finances.

12 Comments:

This from the same government that are actively placing unemplyed in different programs to hide their numbers, and are actively trying to retire people on sickleave, to get those numbers down too.If there were jobs around, those people wouldn't be unemployed, but they still want to import more labour to work at non-existant jobs, to presumably help pay for the people that are in different programs because they couldnt find any jobs..This is spiralling out of any control whatsoever...

The usual context of this is the below replacement level birthrates of some European countries (like Italy and Germany) -- what is the situation in Sweden? Immigrant workers are needed so they can be taxed to fund the pay-as-you-go cash pensions and health benefits ("welfare") of the increasing number (relative to the working population) of native retirees; or so the logic goes.

The problem is most of the immigrants Europe gets are unskilled third worlders. And in addition to fairly slow economic growth failing to produce high demand for workers currently (mentioned in the first comment), these immigrants are really only capable of doing the kind of work that is increasingly being outsourced to eastern Europe and Asia. Hence there is also wage pressure caused not only by an oversupply of the unskilled, but also by 'globalisation'.

In any case, the more than evident social problems caused by such immigration -- well documented on this site -- should be enough to turn anyone against such a solution to the demographic changes afoot today in Europe.

“Nuder argued that getting more people with a foreign background into the labour force is “totally crucial” for securing the Swedish welfare state.” Translated, given the reliance of socialist states on a high tax base, the Finance Minister offers a premise that looks like this: Socialism provides “necessary” services; social services are increasingly expensive, so therefore, the cost to citizens in socialist states can only increase. Increasing the level of foreign labor to tap into additional tax revenues is self-defeating because these people also will expect to benefit from the panoply of “free services.” Sadly, Nuder is a product of this insane system and he is unable to give intelligent thought to “non-socialist” solutions. I feel sorry for the people of Sweden; by their political choices, they are screwing themselves and future generations. It will get worse if increases in “foreign labor” turn out to be Jihadists.

Your post 'The Norwegian Inquisition' - reading LGF today (21st) and tried to click for more info on 'Outside the US Embassy in London today' went to 'This is London' would not load but got a questionnaire 'UK Internet user Monitor' which said 'this site is taking part in survey of internet users' by Forrester Research. Wanted to know my age and country of residence. Not UK? Did not continue with questionnaire. News item still would not load. What is going on?